SAMOUELLE S 



ing to nearly one hundred and fifty, are white, and 

 near the size of caraway comfits ; they are carefully 

 covered, as well to defend them from injuries of the 

 weather as from a coleopterous insect, probably a 

 Carabus, which often destroys them. The female 

 places herself near the entrance of the nest, and 

 whenever the beetle attempts to seize its prey, the 

 guardian insect catches it behind and bites it asun- 

 der. Nothing can exceed the care of these animals 

 in the preservation of their young. Wherever a nest 

 i- situated, fortifications, avenues and entrenchments 

 surround it ; there are also numerous meanders 

 which lead to it, and a ditch encompasses the whole, 

 which few other insects are capable of passing. 



About the middle of April, if the weather be fine 

 and just at the close of day, the mole crickets utter 

 a low, dull, jarring note, not much unlike the chat- 

 tering of the goat-sucker. In the beginning of May 

 they lay their eggs. Mr. White, in his Natural His- 

 tory of Selborne, says, "that a gardener, at a house 

 where he was on a visit, happening to be mowing 

 by the side of a canal, on the 6th of May, his scythe 

 struck too deep, pared o!F a large piece of turf and 

 laid open to view a curious scene of domestic (econo- 

 my. There were many caverns and winding pas- 

 sages leading to a kind of chamber, neatly smoothed 

 and rounded, and about the size of a moderate snuff- 

 box. 'Within this secret nursery were deposited 

 near a hundred eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and 

 enveloped in a touirh skin, hut too lately excluded 

 to contain any rudiments of young, being full of a 

 viscous substance. The eercs lav hut shallow, and 



